cleartool lsview command with flag "-host" without "-quick" is slower

Technote (FAQ)

Question

Why is the IBM Rational ClearCase command cleartool lsview slower when you use the flag "-host" without "-quick"?

Cause

To get the list of all views or a subset in ClearCase, you can use the cleartool lsview command as follows.

cleartool lsview

cleartool lsview -host <host>

cleartool lsview -host <host> -quick

Execution time for command a and command c are almost the same. Whereas command b, lsview host, needs more time.

Answer

Output comes slower, if you use the flag "-host" without "-quick". The reason is the following. The cleartool lsview command performs DNS lookups to determine, whether the view server host is the same host as you specified by "-host".

If you use the "-host" flag, cleartool generates more network calls than the other two commands.

The "-quick" flag filters the lsview output to view tags, where the host specification is the exact case sensitive string that you specified with "-host". Because there is no DNS resolution, lsview does not report views on hosts with multiple names. With the "-quick" option lsview considers the following hosts as different.

ccserver,

CCSERVER,

ccserver.xx.yyyyyy.com.

The documentation specifies that
Physical storage is not examined, and aliases and IP addresses are not resolved.